“Fully tested” is the most abused phrase in the used-PC market. For many sellers it means the machine turned on once. Here’s what it means at our bench — the exact process every desktop passes before it earns a price tag at Bugis Street #CFL A08. Even if you never buy from us, use this as a checklist for any used PC you’re considering, anywhere.
Step 1: Full teardown and clean
Every machine gets disassembled, dust-blown, and its fans and filters cleaned. The CPU cooler comes off and gets fresh thermal paste — old paste dries out over 2–4 years and is the single most common cause of “my PC got slow” complaints. On GPUs with high thermals, we repaste those too.
Step 2: CPU and RAM stress testing
We run sustained all-core CPU load tests while watching temperatures and clock speeds. A CPU that throttles or crashes under 20 minutes of load will fail on you during a long gaming session or render — this test catches it first. RAM gets full memory passes, because faulty RAM causes the most maddening symptoms of any component: random bluescreens, corrupted files, crashes that look like software problems. A stick that fails is replaced, never “monitored”.
Step 3: GPU benchmarks under real load
A graphics card can display a desktop perfectly and still be dying. We run real gaming benchmarks and synthetic stress tests, watching for artifacts (visual glitches), thermal behaviour, and frame-rate consistency — not just averages, but frame-time stability, which is what actually determines whether games feel smooth. If you’ve read our CS2 requirements guide, you know why we’re obsessive about this.
Step 4: Storage health, not just capacity
Every SSD gets a SMART diagnostic read. SSDs wear out with writes, and a drive at 70% health today is a data-loss story next year. Drives below our health threshold are replaced with tested units. This is the check almost no private seller performs — and the number one thing we’d tell you to run before buying on Carousell.
Step 5: Fresh Windows 11 and drivers
A clean, activated Windows 11 install with current GPU and chipset drivers. No previous owner’s files, no mystery bloatware, no “pre-activated” licence tricks. Plug in, log in, done.
Step 6: Final burn-in
Before the shelf, a combined load test runs CPU and GPU together — the hardest realistic scenario a machine faces. Anything that hiccups goes back to the bench, not into a customer’s home. Only after passing everything does the machine get listed with its warranty.
Why bother telling you all this?
Because the testing is the whole reason a refurbished PC with warranty is a rational purchase instead of a gamble. We can stand behind used hardware precisely because we know its condition before it leaves. If any seller — us included — can’t tell you specifically how a machine was tested, assume it wasn’t.
See the results yourself: every build in stock can be tested in-store before you pay. WhatsApp us or drop by — open daily 11am–8pm.